The ownership society
backed by Bush's fiscal year 2006 budget is the worst of all worlds:
fiscally, socially and environmentally irresponsible, morally bankrupt, and
toxic to democracy.

Lincoln fought for
“government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Bush stands for
government of the owners, by the owners, for the owners.

The richest 1 percent
of households already owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
Take-home pay as a share of the economy is at the lowest level since 1929.

Bush is reshaping the
tax and budget system so workers pay a greater share of the costs and owners
pay less. As wealth is increasingly sheltered from taxes, inequality will
become more entrenched and hereditary in Bush's ownership society.

While Bush runs up the
national debt to reckless levels, risking economic crisis, to give more tax
breaks to millionaires, his budget cuts education, a pillar of individual
and national progress, on the pretense of fiscal responsibility.

The unemployment rate
is 30 percent higher than it was in 2000. About one out of six Americans has
no health insurance, and half of all bankruptcies are illness-related. One
out of eight Americans lives below the meager official poverty line -- and
many more can't make ends meet above it.

Bush is building a
bridge to the 20th century -- the pre-New Deal 20th century. Givebacks to
wealthy corporations and people have already given us mid-20th century
revenues for 21st century challenges.

Total federal tax
revenues, says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “are a smaller
share of the economy than in any year since 1959, a time when Medicare,
Medicaid, most federal aid to education, most child care and environmental
programs, and anti-poverty programs such as food stamps did not exist.”

With time running out
to turn back the global tsunami of global warming, Bush keeps energy policy
hostage to the oil and gas lobby. His budget slashes natural resources and
environmental programs 23 percent by fiscal year 2010.

Tax cuts for the
richest 1 percent will cost more than $120 billion in 2006, Citizens for Tax
Justice projects. That about matches Bush's total 2006 budgets for the
Environmental Protection Agency, Education, Housing and Urban Development,
and Veterans Affairs combined.

Instead of making
irresponsible budget cuts, we should be repealing irresponsible tax cuts.

Wealthy Americans have
reaped the lion's share of economic growth. Without fair and adequate taxes,
we cannot rebuild the public infrastructure inherited from past generations.
We cannot invest in the research and education vital for our future.

We will not prosper in
the global economy relying increasingly on low wages and outsourcing in
place of innovation and opportunity.

Bush is undoing the
New Deal and later advances that made the American Dream real for millions
of people -- and made the nation we own together a better one.

Bush wants us to
unlearn the lessons of the Great Depression and more recently burst stock
bubble. He wants to transform Social Security's retirement insurance, with
guaranteed lifetime benefits, into a more costly, risky, privatized
investment gamble.

Bush's ownership
society would replace the American Dream with the American Gamble, rigged
for the wealthy and well connected.

For the Gamble
Generation, insecurity would be the norm and opportunity increasingly the
birthright of wealth, not democracy.

Holly Sklar is coauthor of Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies
That Work for All Of Us (www.raisethefloor.org).
She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com. Distributed
by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Copyright (c) 2005 Holly Sklar